Thread: My "new" wooden plough plane

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

...In Australia we tend to use timbers that are often significantly harder than those in the northern hemisphere...

Also significantly harder than those in New Zealand. I believe Aussies take the meaning of "HARDwood" to a whole new level.

Cheers, Vann.

Originally Posted by Vann

Also significantly harder than those in New Zealand. I believe Aussies take the meaning of "HARDwood" to a whole new level.....

Well, it's true we have some almighty hard hardwoods, Vann, and some damned hard softwoods, too (e.g. Callitris), but sensible folks choose the more agreeable woods (of which there are plenty), for cabinetmaking purposes.......

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Well, it's true we have some almighty hard hardwoods, Vann, and some damned hard softwoods, too (e.g. Callitris), but sensible folks choose the more agreeable woods (of which there are plenty), for cabinetmaking purposes.......

Cheers,

Hi Ian

Must admit that you baffled me with the reference to Callitris, but fortunately Bootle was helpful:

• black cypress - Callitris endlicheri - Janka 6.6 kN,
• white cypress - Callitris glauca - Janka 6.5 kN.

A comparison to a northern hemisphere timber:

• rock maple (USA) - Acer saccharum - Janka 6.4 kN.

Some of the preferred furniture building softwoods in Tasmania are:

• Huon pine - Lagarostrobos franklinii - Janka 4.1 kN,
• celery top pine - Phyllocladus asplenifolius - Janka 4.5 kN*,
• Oyster Bay pine - Callitris rhomboidea - Janka 6.4 kN.

(* Celery top pine from the southern forest is substantially harder than that from the west coast and north west coast - perhaps yielding a janka approaching 5.5 kN.)

It is really interesting to compare these hardnesses to that of Tasmanian blue gum - Eucalytus globulus:

• Old growth - Janka 12 kN,
• regrowth - Janka 10.5 kN,
• plantation - Janka 6.5 kN.

TBG can be rather hard, or "about the same as some cypress or pine", depending on source.


Fair Winds

Graeme

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Nice argument, DW, and some very interesting detail.

But it seems to be almost an Anglo thing. Metal planes certainly largely displaced wooden ones in UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But this is not quite the case in non-English speaking parts of the world:

• wooden planes (kana) are still the dominant norm in Japan,
• China largely uses wooden planes, but produces cheap metal planes for export,
• continental Europe still has a high proportion of wooden planes in active use.

In Australia we tend to use timbers that are often significantly harder than those in the northern hemisphere but that is just another problem to solve and work with. Terry Gordons solution is to make his planes from gidgee which is almost the same hardness as lignum vitae but much prettier.
HNT Gordon & Co. Australia :: Wood Working Hand Planes & Vices (Vises) – HNT Gordon & Co. Classic Planemakers Australia


Cheers

Graeme

Each of those is sort of a special case, and if the woodworking that one is doing is sort of a special case (like if you're working stuff 2000 hardness plus all the time like derek seems to do), then probably anything is fine because you won't be dimensioning by hand.

If you are working paulownia and very soft clear wood like the japanese do, their tools are probably the best case (especially if you are finishing straight off of a plane).

I think the lack of metal planes probably has more to do with cost, but don't know, and Terry Gordon's planes work well if you're working "Derek woods", but here in the states, they tend to be set aside after a while.

(I've tried each of these, and the continental planes, too - and have some of everything except the gordon planes I've purchased are long gone in favor of the chinese planes that I still have).

For folks working a combination of medium hardwoods and softwoods, following in the footsteps of the most used tools is probably still the best option - especially if you'll do some roughing by hand.

Back to the original point - if you're going to do a significant amount of grooving and profiling, it's better to have the individual planes for each task, all the way down to doing drawer grooving with a self made plane (and there's no lower limit in taste. If fastest is gluing together and screwing together, that's fine - it'll still work more quickly and easily than a multi plane). But keep the multiplane for the one-off uses where making a separate tool doesn't make sense.

(same with rebates - nothing really works better than a moving fillister plane. The modern metal planes can be really precise (like LVs) or clattery (construction planes like a stanley 78), but any volume of work cutting rebates will point a user toward marking the rebates initially and cutting to them with a moving fillister plane with possible cleanup from a wooden rabbet plane to the very mark. The matter of why that is is just ease. Less volume, ease isn't really an issue, but LV's wonderful skew rebate plane, etc, doesn't have the same ease. It's a beautiful plane, but sticky metal in the cut and cutting rebates is volume work for the most part with precision only at the very last cuts.

Originally Posted by D.W.

........ (like if you're working stuff 2000 hardness plus all the time like derek seems to do), ........

Wasn't sure what you meant by this reference to Derek.

It is true that Derek does like working with jarrah, a very figurative red eucalypt with excellent craft properties, but it only grows 4,000 kms from here so I rarely use it. Its janka is 8.3 kN which is certainly harder than the afforementioned pines.

Imperial janka for jarrah is 1,860 lbf, which I guess is what your 2000 hardness refers to?

Originally Posted by GraemeCook

Wasn't sure what you meant by this reference to Derek.

It is true that Derek does like working with jarrah, a very figurative red eucalypt with excellent craft properties, but it only grows 4,000 kms from here so I rarely use it. Its janka is 8.3 kN which is certainly harder than the afforementioned pines.

Imperial janka for jarrah is 1,860 lbf, which I guess is what your 2000 hardness refers to?

Yes, jarrah - i do wood hardness by horseshoes, so that's close enough for me.

I haven't worked jarrah by hand - it's sold at too high of a price here. I know below that range, we have woods that dimension by hand well (beech, ash, etc) and then around the same hardness, we have woods that are much less nice to work (hard maple), so it's hard to tell just by a number.

What also comes to mind on the higher scale of things is gabon ebony - it works wonderfully, but doesn't seem to have directional conviction. It's supposedly very hard, but you can't tell planing it. Kingwood, on the other hand, is about the same hardness and it's like planing hardened rubber sometimes. Fortunately or unfortunately, it's also expensive so I have only planed pieces of it a couple of times.

At any rate, I don't know where I'm going other than that I've learned to follow convention, and that:
* most people who buy a stanley 55 should buy a nice one with a box, because it will be easier to resell
* most folks have a foray with a multiplane of some sort, but I think they probably go back to router bits after a short period of time
* many would be served well buying profiling planes made out of wood, but don't want to venture into it (and it's fair to say, just like the japanese tools, if you've got a proclivity for getting something like that out only once in a great while, it will not be the same as having planes that are in regular use).
* and to those gordon and japanese planes - on opposite ends of the spectrum. Both are popular to buy here, but I don't think most use either for long. There are exceptions, but the average japanese plane here is either unfitted or found fitted once, tight due to shrinkage over time, and then never used.

It's just hard for me to guess much because I am self taught and stubborn, and I like to talk from the point of view of doing all of the work by hand and can idealize it sometimes because I'm looking for that sensory satisfaction - the feel of efficiency - that I don't guess everyone else gets such a buzz from.

certainly, if i had to build a dozen large cases from jarrah each year only with hand tools, I probably wouldn't have much of a buzz from it, either.